Game of Poetry

Diane DeLaurentis

Professor Wexler

September 16, 2016

ENG ESM423

Game of Poetry

According to Linda Gregerson of The Atlantic online, sonnets follow a certain structure, “…(fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, a fixed rhyme scheme) and, of equal importance, a set of thematic and rhetorical conventions” (Anthology).

While sonnets are usually structured in this way, by examining form through word choices, rhyme and meter, we can see how playwright, William Shakespeare manipulates and enhances the meaning of his love sonnet, Sonnet CXVI, to show that love is a fickle and an unpredictable game.

One way, Shakespeare uses form to illustrate the love as a game, is through the double meaning of words and word repetition, such as in the line, “Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds,” (2-3). Using the word “love” twice in one sentence causes the reader to repeat the subject of the poem, which in terms of expressing love is a bold feeling to admit. Readers then experience the bravery of their claim by the sheer utterance of the word. By doing so, Shakespeare gets the chance to play with his reader’s emotion. Repeating these words also demands the reader to think twice, as in the phrase “Or bends with the remover to remove:” (4).  “This mirroring of words is suggestive of a loving couple” (BBC), yet because this reads as a whole as a contradictory statement. Shakespeare appears to be playing a trick on the reader revealing the mischief of love, which backs the poems meaning that “[t]he story was of love—love unrequited, love requited but unfulfilled, love so fleeting fulfilled as merely to make suffering keener, love thwarted by the beloved’s absence, or aloofness, or prior possession of another. Impediment was as central to the sonnet as was love” (Auditory). By manipulating the words themselves, Shakespeare proves that the form of a love poem can be as teasing as a game.

Another way Shakespeare parallels the experience of love with poetic form is by manipulating his rhythm and meter.

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark.

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. (5-8)

Shakespeare plays with rhyme and meter, by surprising the reader with an extra beat in the sixth and eighth measure of each stanza. The reader is now forced to rush the words shaken and taken if they are to fit into the rhythm and meter of the poem, thus illustrating a playful surprise in form. The off rhythm of reading the sonnet then, reflects the unstable nature of experiencing love. Shakespeare also shows fickleness in love by using words that parallel nature’s ever-changing pattern.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (9-12)

Love, being seen as a natural experience is associated with nature, and in nature things bloom and die. Just like the seasons love blooms and then fades. Shakespeare chooses words to express the imagery of nature and then expresses how fickle love is. Words like “rosy” to express the bloom of love, and the use of “sickle”, as used by the grim reaper, as a symbol of death. In addition, Shakespeare uses the couplet, “If this be error and upon me proved, / I never writ, nor no man ever loved.” (13-14), at the end of his sonnet to express the idea that love is fickle. The readers’ natural rhythm of A/B/A/B schema is broken abruptly by E/E. Although, this is the conventional structure for sonnets during this time, it is still jarring in the readers’ experience of reading the poem. It is as if the poet anticipated the comfortable rhythm of its audience and purposely tried to shake things up a bit at the end. In addition, couplets are usually indented to the right, away from the rest of the poems position. It’s as if to say in layout form, love is not fixed. You can’t hold or tie down love.

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXVI is a wonderful example of how form lifts content. His sonnets are playful, teasing, tricking, testing and unpredictable and by reading the poetry one can experience what it feels like to be playing the game of love.

Work Cited

Anthology, Audible, and Linda Gregerson. "William Shakespeare. Sonnet 116." The

            Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 12 Sept. 2016. Web. 20 Sept. 2016.

"English Literature William Shakespeare: Sonnet 116." BBC-GCSE Bitesize: Structure

            and Language. Bbc.co.uk, n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2016.

Smith, Philip. 100 Best-loved Poems. Dover Thrift Editions ed. NewYork: Dover, 1995.

            Print.